


HOME ISN'T ONLY WHERE YOU START FROM

by cailures



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 16:48:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4632714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cailures/pseuds/cailures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For #20.</p>
    </blockquote>





	HOME ISN'T ONLY WHERE YOU START FROM

**Author's Note:**

> For #20.

He headed out into the desert, because being free, whatever that meant, had been his goal for so long. Nowhere was really safe anymore, but the Citadel was at least safe enough to turn his back on, which was something. It seemed like ages since he'd left anywhere at anything other than a terrified dead run, fleeing from one danger or another, and though he was still leaving it, he felt a definite fondness for the Citadel being a place he could leave at his own pace. 

Furiosa watched him leave. She knew better than to try to stop him, or even do more that accept his nod of goodbye. She knew better than to read it as a rejection either. There was only so much you could ask of a person at one go, only so much any of them could spare. Back in her childhood, when she'd known the Keeper of the Seeds, she'd been told the lesson that you had to trust in some things to find their own way and let them take their own time; if you dug up a seedling to see how it was growing, all you would do is kill the plant. She had to let him go, or his staying would be meaningless.

The war with Immortan Joe had screwed over the local power structure, such as it was. The bullet farm and the other places for which he'd gathered his forces were like ant hills that had been dug into. Or perhaps like planets struck hard by meteors, flinging bits of themselves out into space, much of it burning up in outward trajectories, or falling back to earth to start new fires. But there wasn't anything else out there to pull it in, and so slowly the landscape was rearranging itself as different pieces found new orbits.

The first night after the Citadel, he sat and stared up at the stars. Somewhere, back in the burned box of knowledge left over of the world before, there was a scrap of wisdom that talked about how deserts created prophets. Not just any prophets, but the sort of leaders that would reshape the world with their message. It was the clear horizons, the infinite sky, the harshness of the setting that was enough to convince any willing mind that the universe was in a constant state of judgement of them. Go into the desert and you'd have visions. Survive the desert and become a leader. Die and the desert would forget you and cover your tracks in the next gust of wind.

As he stared up at the sky, watching the occasional streak of a falling star, he didn't think about the desert forgetting him.

He thought about Furiosa. Her and the remaining wives, and the remaining Vulvalini. They'd seen him. They'd remember him. They were important, and being known by them was important.

He hoped they would change the world. Even if there was no longer an end to the desert. 

There was a rock digging into his back. He dug it out and flung it into the darkness. He heard it impact against the baked desert ground at some distance. Everything fell back to earth eventually.

He knew that in the rearranged solar system of this little part of the world, the Citadel would be the new center, and he would be a comet, swinging around on a long elliptical journey, but always part of the system, always journeying between his restless momentum carrying him away forever and his need for them causing him to plunge into their heart and be consumed.

It was a long time before Furiosa saw him again, but she saw evidence of him often enough. People came, directed to the Citadel by the wandering figure that crossed so many paths out in the great big nowhere. They came sometimes just asking for refuge, for a place to be, but enough of them came asking for specific people, offering specific skills, that she knew he'd talked to them.

She grinned a little at that. He must have thought a great deal of them to have talked at all. He had an uncanny ability to find them things they'd need; mechanics, books, and even one little caravan of plant-sellers with more seeds to add to their garden.

It was difficult work settling in as one of the new heads of the Citadel. No one wanted to replicate the structure Joe had used, no one wanted someone in charge that would repeat those sins. It was surely an irony that the new leaders were people who had spent their lives trying to escape, who had only worn an allegiance to the Citadel as a disguise, or had been hidden away entirely. Now they were in charge, trying to rebuild around a place they'd thought of as a jail. Time would tell if they could make the bars into a trellis, and get some vines to grow and bloom there.

The work had been so hard at first. Like a nightmare where they had to re-enact horrific scenes over and over again, they'd had to return to the battlegrounds of their departure and return, to pay honor to the dead, and to perform the ruthless practicality of recovering what they could from the crashes. It was not a great deal easier at home, with all the war pups to raise up to be actual people, and the crowds at the base who were so used to panic and scrambling that they feared every hand out or up was only there to strike at them.

Ironically, she still dreamed of the Green Place sometimes, even knowing it was gone. She's expected the nightmares of the chase, of never being free, of the rig that broke down at the wrong moment. Those she could wake from and think No, we defeated them, we're free, we won. And there would still be some solid satisfaction in that, even with everything it had cost them. It was the dreams of the Green Place, colored by the innocence of her memories, that made her sit up in the dark and have to take deep breaths before resting again. 

Then she'd join the other women in the morning and return to the work of making it real. She hoped the dreams would fade when reality was able to match them.

One night, when the dreams and the memories too much, and the odd paths her life had taken were too tangled to try to work back into a pattern, she'd taken a vehicle and headed out into the desert. She wanted a little space, a little quiet, in some way missing the silence of long road trips, for all that everything else about those memories had been the opposite of peaceful. She hadn't realized until she'd gone out past where the Citadel lights still smudged the sky that she'd headed in the direction of where the Green Place had been. 

She stopped the truck and climbed out, hauling herself onto the roof to stare at the sky. People used to navigate by those lights, she reminded herself. Used to make up stories and drawn lines connecting places that were farther apart than you could imagine, and pretend they were part of a whole. 

She watched for falling stars and she wished and wished and wished. 

Hours into her vigil, she head someone approaching. She was very good at understanding the noises in the darkness by this point in her life, and knew the sounds were the kind made by someone who wanted to be heard. 

She tilted her head away from the shining scattering of distant fires above her.

Max nodded to her in greeting, and hauled himself up beside her. “Nice night.” he said, and stretched out by her side.

In the cold of the desert in the dark, she hauled herself closer to him and they fit their warm bodied together.

Home isn't only where you start from. Home is the place you return to.


End file.
